Issue - meetings

Report of the Town Clerk & Chief Executive.

The Committee received a report of the Town Clerk and Chief Executive containing a scoped and costed Climate Action Strategy for the City of London Corporation.

The Chair commented that this piece of work was of major corporate significance and that he and other Members, particularly the Chairman of Port Health and Environmental Services Committee, had been working closely alongside Officers in recent months to progress this.

A Member, also the serving Chairman of the Port Health and Environmental Services Committee, commented that taking action to address climate change was clearly a vitally important issue and that the development of this Strategy put the City Corporation on the front foot. He added that he had been clear from the outset that the Strategy must be impactful, deliverable and, above all, affordable. He highlighted that many Members had already attended various briefings on the Strategy in recent months and had offered their input into it for which he was very grateful. Members were informed that the report before them today was a data driven, evidence-based strategy on Climate Action that tracked all of the existing, relevant City Corporation strategies into it, not least the Transport and Air Quality strategies. At its heart was a set of target based actions that would have a comprehensive performance and reporting freamework wrapped around it. The Member went on to state that, probably for the first time, the City Corporation were looking to approve a Strategy alongside a medium-term funding plan to enable the Corporation to deliver what it set out to. He reported that there were, however, no in-year funding reallocaions and it was proposed that the actions were funded from the next financial year, from April 2021 onwards. Thereafter, funding would continue to be allocated on an annual basis in the round with